Ulf Harlou

Interface diagram: Design tool for supporting the development of modularity in complex product systems

For products with a myriad of systems, groups of specialised engineers develop entire technical sub-systems, and great effort is needed to integrate these systems for fulfilling the product’s intended properties describing its purposeful behaviour. This way of developing products gets even more complex when using a mass customisation strategy because standard designs (reusable modules) have to be designed to fit a range of products. This product development set-up requires that engineers working in different technical domains collaborate and are able to share information in a unified way. This article presents a visual design tool –the Interface diagram– which aims to support the engineering process of developing modularity in complex product systems. The tool is a model of a product system representing the arrangement of its elements and their interfaces. The tool has similar characteristics to a high-level product architecture model, aiming at supporting integration of technical sub-systems by documenting interfaces and interactions among components from different functional sub-systems and among different physical modules. One of the objectives for using the design tool is to support the activity of decomposing a product system into modules consisting of components developed by different engineering teams. The usefulness of the Interface diagram has been tested in an industrial development project showing positive results of shortening the lead time and minimising rework. Moreover, the Interface diagram has been used in interplay with a broader Product Lifecycle Management system. This allows the product structures from the Interface diagram to be enriched with detailed product documentation like computer-aided design, requirements, view models, design specifications and interface descriptions.

PLM system support for modular product development

Develop and evaluate modular concepts for complex products.Clear responsibility for interfaces.All engineering teams have access to the same single source of information.Visualisation of multiple views on products.Automated reporting on design progress and cost. A modular design strategy both enables, but also demands, parallelism in design activities and collaboration between a diversity of disciplines in companies, which often involves supporting computer-based tools for enhancing interaction, design management, and communication. Product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems offer support by automating and managing some of the operational complexity of modular design activities. PLM system tools are used for handling a variety of product definitions, to manage workflow of development activities, and to measure relational properties such as cost and performance. Companies often use a PLM tool for management of CAD files, documents, and drawings, but they do not take advantage of the full potential of the PLM system to support the development activities of modular product designs. The key result of this paper is the description of an empirical tested approach using a visual product architecture representation in combination with a PLM system to support the development of a product family of products. The results from the study encompass new PLM capabilities for handling multiple product structures, visualising multiple architectural views on products, controlling interfaces, and quantifying and communicating the status and progress of product-related resources.

Implementing a product platform in 35 man-days:: The visual thinking approach

This paper demonstrates how a company can implement a product platform in 35 man-days. Instead of developing a new platform, the main idea of this platform is to make decisions concerning good solutions to a product assortment, essentially by determining what is value-creating variance. The main benefits are reduced costs, reduced lead time and increased ability to focus engineering resources on aspects providing value to the customer. A so-called visual approach has been utilised. By means of a Product Family Master Plan, the content and scope of the platform have been modelled and visualised. This has contributed to commitment on the management and operational levels in the whole chain, from customer to production and delivery.